EA Is Even Less Popular Than Bank of America, Which Is Pretty Bad

I mean, NO ONE likes banks.

Does anything rouse anger quite like gaming? Consumerist has just concluded its tournament for the worst company in America, and for the second year in a row, Electronic Arts took the top spot. That means Consumerist readers hate EA even worse than Bank of America, a company that’ll basically pick your pocket if you let your bank balance drop below a certain threshold. It wasn’t even close: 78 percent of voters picked EA.

Consumerist writes:

“It’s only a fractured, antiquated public perception that video games are somehow frivolous holdovers from childhood that allows gamers to be abused and taken advantage of by the very people who supply them the games they play.”

In other words, EA is learning what little brothers all over America spent the late ’90s learning the hard way: Do NOT mess with somebody’s Sim City game.

EA’s response to this latest embarrassment? In a blog post titled “We can do better,” COO Peter Moore admitted mistakes ranging from the Sim City disaster to disappointing games and “missteps on new pricing models.” But then he strolled down a path lined with straw men, culminating in the suggestion that homophobes tried to stuff the ballot box:

In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America.

Come on, Peter. You can’t magick this away by blaming social conservatives any more than I can disappear my city’s problems by cranking taxes up to 25 percent and running the game at double the speed.

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